It’s a bit rough when you are just trying to support your teenage daughter’s future as a pastry chef and she bans you from touching the chocolate brownies that are sitting on the bench. Especially when she has just called for help in setting up a brownie...

How on earth did we end up with so many gourds decorating our loungeroom? And why do I feel I can’t get rid of them? Is there some weird sort of attraction to the rounded orangeness of them and their gorgeous rotundness? Why did a visitor add a baby gourd to the...

Okay, I’ll admit this doesn’t do my daughter’s teacake much justice, but she has been baking so fast that I am struggling to keep up with her racing through the Australian Women’s Weekly Baking Collection. In fact she already has a plate of...

My 16 year old daughter is a fantastic baker, and this week she decided she would set herself the task of working through an entire cookbook and blogging it. Being quite keen on desserts, I was happy to browse through the bookshop with her until she found the...

If you have never seen Danny Gregory’s video “The Art of Breakfast“, check it out right now. Danny is the author of “Everyday Matters” and has inspired many thousands of people to take notice of the basic things in their life – and...

I love this cheeky little guy chewing away on his baguette! The bag he lives on became part of my background. I found it impossible to resist, and with a little white paint on top it became the perfect surface for a new collection of “Drawing Tomatoes” as...

Okay – so it was the turn of the garlic to pose. My sister was very proud of this bunch of amazing pink garlic. Gathered together they looked just like a bunch of flowers. What’s more, they posed well, and didn’t take off mid drawing! I prepared this...

I have never seen so many different types of tomatoes in one place – thanks to my sister’s love of markets. I was trying to catch them here, but I obviously took too long, as my arrangement kept disappearing and being eaten! I used watercolours and colour...

I can’t tell you quite how much my sister and her family spoilt me in France. She and her husband had rented an old renovated millhouse near Nimes for a week, and I was invited to stay with them. The weather was sunny and glorious – especially after...

[Reading this two years on, I realise that I made Beth’s art group sound like they are a bunch of onions. I promise that isn’t what I meant … 🙂 … really …] I joined Beth’s art group about a year ago now, desperate for some creative...